Americans are way into time travel

Americans, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center, would like to see flying cars, time travel, and improvements on human longevity in the next 50 years. Not so much brain-enhancing implants or designer babies.

Pew polled Americans on their predictions for scientific advancement over the next 50 years, as well as their attitudes toward developing science that have the potential to become commonplace in American life.

A majority of Americans (59 percent) said that overall technological advancement will lead to improvements in people’s lives. Eight in 10 said they expect custom-grown lab organs to become a reality within the next five decades and half expect computers will become so adept at creating art that it will become indistinguishable from humans.

People were less expectant that we’ll figure out teleportation (39 percent) or colonize other planets (33 percent). Only 19 percent of the public thinks that, like X-Men’s Storm, humans will be able to control the weather.

That optimism about the more distant technological future, though, was tempered by some apprehension of the advancements that are closer to reality.

More than half said it would be bad if “most people wear implants or other devices that constantly show them information about the world around them,” a la Google Glass. Well over 60 percent felt altering the DNA of future children, opening U.S. airspace to personal drones and robot caregivers for the elderly would make life worse.

And, likely to Sergey Brin’s disappointment, more people said they weren’t all that interested in riding in a driverless car or eating lab-grown meat.